The Minus 5: Down with Wilco : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

You don't hear much about Wilco these days -- what have they been up to? These one-time recluses seem to unveil another big statement every few months, and in the wake of their career album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, their career-album documentary and their Loose Fur side project, here's Down With Wilco, the band's collaboration with indie-pop vet Scott McCaughey and his collective, the Minus 5. Other hands on deck include R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, the Spinanes' Rebecca Gates and the Posies' Ken Stringfellow, with everyone collaborating on thirteen new songs. It's a Saturday- night version of Foxtrot: laid-back, poignant and comic. The opening ballad, with McCaughey solemnly intoning the chorus "I never wanna lose/The days of wine and booze," is worth a standing ovation all by itself -- the funniest drinking song since "Passenger Side," on the first Wilco album.

ROB SHEFFIELD
(From RS 917, March 6, 2003)